There’s a joke in our industry when someone says they lost their job, we say:
Congratulations!
Listen, losing your job is no joke, and no one is being insensitive. The underlying message is actually:
Great. Now you’re free to control your income stream.
Let’s face it – how reliable is income from a job?
When I was young you learned that you pick a good company, work hard, do a good job, and the company will take care of you all the way into retirement.
That’s just no longer true.
Companies are constantly down-sizing; right-sizing; automating; and adjusting to increase profits. No one’s job is ever secure.
When I was a Manager with a Fortune 500 company, they had a 150 year tradition that no one was ever laid off.
When departments were eliminated, it was management’s responsibility to find new jobs within the organization for every affected employee.
A new CEO took office and just like that, lay-offs started and the long held value of protecting employee jobs was gone forever.
So how do you protect yourself?
Create a new source of income: One that you create and control – and never give that control away to anyone else.
That’s what I did in the 90s with real estate investing.
The result? My wife, Margie, and I were able to “retire” from our jobs and we have not left our income in anyone’s else hands since.
Here’s the kicker…
We have always had more money and more free time then we ever had working for someone else.
Until the day my mother died, she was sure that we were doing something wrong. Being a Depression-era child, she could not understand how we could leave our jobs, be home most of the time, yet have more money than ever before.
It’s a mindset. She could only see working for someone else in a job.
Our mindset was to control our own income.
What is your mindset?
Only you can decide the life you want.
Expect abundance,
Lou Castillo
